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China Moves to Normalize the Status of Millions of People on Margins

Beijing hopes move will address social inequities and boost population and economic growth

China announced earlier this week that it would grant household-registration permits, or "hukou," to 13 million undocumented Chinese citizens who have been living on the margins of society. The WSJ's Menglin Huang explains the hukou system. Photo: Agence France-Presse

BEIJING—China said it would normalize the status of millions of people who had lived on the margins of society, a move intended to address social inequities and to spur population and economic growth.

Beijing’s decision to grant household registrations to these people, announced late Wednesday, is part of efforts to overhaul a decades-old system that was designed to curb rural migration to overcrowded cities. Those rules are outdated as Beijing pushes the bulk of its nearly 1.4 billion people to move to cities to help spur...